Housemates
by Colubrina
Summary: Hermione Granger, graduate student, needs a cheap apartment that is free of excessive cats, groping men, or weird smells. Abraxas Malfoy wants another housemate. The only problem is Tom Riddle. AU. Really AU. No, really. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

Hermione looked at the blond man sitting – well, lounging really – in the chair across from her. The house was beautiful; it had original woodwork that no one had ever committed the sacrilege of painting, leaded windows and little architectural details everywhere she turned. The room the man had showed her was perfect with huge windows and its own bath. "Why is the rent so low?" she asked. There had to be a catch; there always was. So far she'd met with a woman who had far too many cats, a man who'd leered at her and tried to look down her shirt, and been in at least three houses with rooms for let that had odd smells she hadn't been able to identify.

This one looked okay so far but by this point she was wary. Also, if it hadn't been for the rainbow flag hanging in the front hall window she would have been acutely nervous around a man this ridiculously attractive. From his bone structure to his nearly white hair this man had jaw-dropping good looks. To make it worse, he was dressed with the casual arrogance of wealth and draping himself all over the really quite nice furniture. He was about as out of her league as they came. Given she didn't really think he'd start flustering her with male attention, however, she just leaned forward and waited for his answer.

He sighed. "It's my partner – that's not an issue for you, is it?" She rolled her eyes and he continued. "He's a giant, fucking pain in the ass and he's managed to drive away three roommates so far. I thought if I dropped the rent maybe someone would decide the deal was worth putting up with him."

"At this rate you aren't going to even begin to make any money. Why get a roommate at all?" Hermione asked.

The man grinned at her and she stared at the way that smile turned his angular face into one filled with boyish charm. "I can't let him _win_ ," he said. "Say you'll take the room. You seem sane enough and – "

"Jesus. You just don't give up, do you?"

Hermione turned and eyed the newcomer, clearly the pain in the ass partner. If the other one was all blond and sunshine this one was, well, not sunshine. He scowled at her from under black curls so perfect her hands twitched with the urge to rumple them.

"What?" he demanded as she continued to stare.

"Just trying to decide which of you is prettier," she said.

"Me," said the blond. "Tom, meet… I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

"Fuck, Abraxas, you've offered her the room and don't even know her name?" Tom crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at her.

"I'm Hermione," she said. "And, yes, I've read The Winter's Tale and, yes, I know it's a weird name."

The blond laughed. "My loving parents burdened me with 'Abraxas'. I'm not going to be giving you a hard time for your name, Hermione. When will you move your stuff in? Rents due the first of the month -"

"Assuming she stays that long," the dark haired Tom drawled. 

"So, I'm guessing the social skills classes in school didn't take for you," Hermione said with mock courtesy.

"What?"

"You know, the classes the kids who can't manage to play nice with others get sent to," Hermione said. "Remedial 'how not to be a dick' sessions with the school social worker, basically."

Tom began to smile. "I'm afraid I didn't get sent to any such cute little sessions, Hermione," he said. "You sound well acquainted with them, however. Did they 'take', as you put it, for you"

She shrugged. "Well, I haven't punched anyone since 9th grade so I guess so."

Abraxas began to laugh. "I'll bet you a bottle of good scotch she stays all year, Tom."

"You're on," he said.

"I can move in Thursday," Hermione said, standing up. "Tom, why don't you put on your manners, assuming you have any, and show me to the door."

The man stalked across the room and she tried not to notice that he moved like a cat, all lean muscle and grace, and, at the door that led to the front hall, stood with an arm extended, waiting for her to pass through. "Abraxas," she said, "it was nice meeting you. I'll see you Thursday, nineish? We can sign the lease and you can give me a key and what all?"

"There's no lease," Tom said. She looked at him and he tossed her a key, which, even as close to him as she was, she fumbled and almost dropped. She glared at him as she straightened up and shoved the key into a pocket and he laughed. "You won't stay long enough to make a lease worth the hassle, Hermione, trust me. Move in whenever you want. Then out shortly thereafter."

She looked at him and said, flatly, "This place is clean, free of excessive pets and men who are likely to grope me after too many beers so, frankly, it's ideal. Get used to me, Tom." She walked past him and opened the front hall door. "Nice to meet you," she added.

As she shut the door behind her she could hear Tom say, "You are such an asshole," to Abraxas.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Tom may have called Abraxas an asshole but it became clear before Hermione had been in their house a day that Tom might as well have been describing himself. He planned to win whatever weird power game the two of them were playing over whether or not Tom could drive another housemate away. He was rude. He made unkind personal observations. He insulted her hair. He shut doors in her face. He suggested her ancestry was vile.

The first few days she bristled and glared and if she'd had feathers they would have been in a perpetually ruffled state. She admitted to herself that she wasn't great with people – there was, after all, a reason she'd had to have lunch with the school social worker and the woman's little band of misfits for several years – but Tom Riddle took bad with people to a whole new level. You could almost see the contempt dripping from him; he despised everyone, thought everyone was an idiot, and while he could turn on a charm so practiced waitresses and coffee shop workers fawned on him, he could turn it off just as easily.

He never bothered to turn it on for Hermione.

"Filthy little pest," he snapped at her one morning as she set her used teacup on the counter. "Can't you at least rinse that out?"

"You do it," she suggested, too tired after a night wrestling with a deadline for a journal and revision requests that made no sense at all to react to his insult-du-jour.

He bristled at her and Hermione began to smile. So _that_ was how to play this game. She settled down at the table and smiled at Abraxas. "How did you two meet?" she asked. "You've never told me."

"That would be because our personal lives are none of your business," Tom said as he banged her cup loudly in the sink as he rinsed it.

Abraxas ignored him. "We were at the same boarding school," he said. "Tom was on scholarship because he is bloody brilliant and I was barely passing math. It was a match made in heaven."

"He was your tutor?" Hermione asked and looked over at the fuming man. "That's so sweet. I didn't realize Tom was more than a pretty face."

"Oh," Abraxas said, hiding a grin, "he's a right prodigy. Won all sorts of nutty awards."

"I never would have guessed," Hermione said. "So, Tom, what do you do?"

"Do?" he asked.

"You know," she said, "for work?"

"I've got a grant to do independent research right now," he said. "What do _you_ do?"

"I'm ABD," she said. "Medieval poetry."

He snorted rudely and leaned up against the counter so he could sneer at her more effectively. "Why does that not surprise me?"

"Because you look down on literature and the arts?" Hermione asked, her voice as sweet as she could make it, "and you look down on me so it seems logical to you that I must be doing something you see as worthless?"

"I'm sure it's a perfectly good field for women," Tom said. "All the cute little poetry things, I mean."

"What exactly are you researching?" she asked. "Ways to bottle how much of a jerk you are?"

He smiled, obviously pleased to have nettled her. "Cellular regeneration," he said. "Immortality."

Abraxas cut in. "What's the name of your lab team, again, Tom?" he asked.

"The Death Eaters," Tom said, sounding pleased with himself. His smug expression, however, faltered, when Hermione began to snicker. "What?" he demanded.

"Did you come up with that name when you were twelve?" she said. "It's the twee-est thing I've ever heard. 'Death Eaters'." She began to giggle in earnest and Tom stalked out of the room.

"That wasn't nice," Abraxas said from where he was sitting. "I didn't take you for someone who likes to kick cripples."

Hermione looked at him in disbelief and Abraxas sighed. "Look," he said. "He grew up in the foster care system. He had a childhood that was beyond bad. He's… statistically he should be in jail or dead and he knows it."

"He got a scholarship to whatever school you were at," Hermione said, waving her hand as if to brush away Abraxas' remarks. "He got out."

"How kind do you think boys are to the brilliant, scholarship kid?" Abraxas asked her. His voice was gentle and patient and Hermione felt vague stirrings of guilt in her soul for mocking the dumb little name he'd come up with for his research team, which irritated her because Tom was _such_ a dick.

Hermione looked out the door, following Tom's exit with her eyes. "You protected him didn't you?" she asked, starting to understand their odd little relationship.

Abraxas shrugged. "And he protected me. He's a dirty fighter and I was the queer kid."

"He's an asshole," Hermione said, pushing away the image of Tom, uncomfortable and out of place at an elite school, fighting for acceptance, first as a gifted student and then, when that didn't work, with tricks picked up in foster care. He'd been clever enough to not get caught, he was sure. She'd bet no one crossed him or anyone in his circle, anyone he was protecting, more than once.

Abraxas shrugged again. "People don't turn into Tom because they've had it easy. Just… give him a chance."

…

After her conversation with Abraxas Hermione had meant to try to be reasonably pleasant to Tom; that intention, as genuine as it was, lasted until the next morning when he started reading poetry out loud in a high pitched, querulous tone and then asking Abraxas if he could explain what this meant, that the words were _just too hard_ for a simple scientist like him to understand.

What made it worse was that he was funny. He dropped over the top interpretations straight out of critical theory 101 and then would say, rubbing his nose, "But that can't be right. Help me out here, Abraxas." She would sit there, the audience of one for his little performances, and listen to him massacre words she'd loved her whole life and make the whole thing entertaining. She wavered between wanting to laugh and wanting to cry and wanting to throw things at his head.

The longer the game went on, however, the less funny it became. She knew he was retaliating for the way she'd laughed at 'Death Eaters' and tried not to let him see her react. She even patted him on the shoulder once and said, her voice light, "We'll make a student of English of you yet."

"I'd go mad first," he said, voice just as light. "I'd lose my mind, just tortured into insanity by this drivel."

Her smile faltered and his became predatory. "Tell me what's your favorite, Hermione, so I can go look it up."

She fled at that and she could hear Abraxas sigh behind her. "Do you have to be such a prick to everyone?" the man asked.

"I think you'll owe me that scotch by the end of the week," Tom Riddle said, his voice infuriating in its smugness. "I'll take _24-year Macallan_ single malt, please."

"That's what you think, you bastard," Hermione muttered as she dragged herself up the stairs to her room.

Abraxas found her later, coming in with an invented excuse that he was going out on errands and did she need anything. She'd curled up in the window seat, her back braced against the wall and a copy of _Tell Me_ in her hands.

"Going shopping?" Hermione asked, wiping the water away from her eyes. "Planning on picking up some scotch, perhaps?"

Abraxas perched himself on the edge of the window seat and plucked the book from her fingers. "He went too far?" he asked.

"You ask as though this might be something new for him," she said. "Does Tom Riddle ever not go too far?" She took her book back and opened it up again, head down until Abraxas put his hand over the pages.

"What are you reading?" he asked. "And, no, I'm not going to the liquor store. Tom can buy his own booze."

She hunched over but when he pulled his hand away from the pages and rested it on her shoulder she began to read. " _'I want a red dress_ '," she said, pushing the words at him, and Abraxas sat and listened.

"That's – " he began.

"Hardly important compared to what Tom's doing," she interrupted, her tone bitter. "Trite. Unimportant. Drivel was, I think, the word he used. Suitable for not very bright women."

"I was going to say filled with rage," Abraxas said. "Moving. Passionate." He sighed. "You know," he said, "I'd understand if you wanted to leave. He's really pulling out all the stops for you for some reason."

"I'm special," Hermione said. "Lucky me."

"I'll tell him to back off," Abraxas said, standing up, putting his body between her eyes and the dark shadow who'd stopped in the hall to listen to their exchange.

Hermione huffed out a laugh. "Isn't that not playing fair in your little game?"

Abraxas brushed a hand over her hair as she sat there. "Some things are more important than winning," he said. "I'll get you some chocolate while I'm out. There's a place that makes custom dark chocolate with bit of bacon in it. I think you'd like it."

"Thanks," she said, wiping at her eyes again. "You're really great, Abraxas."

Abraxas shrugged. "It's just chocolate," he said. "No need to get maudlin about it."

…

Tom found the poem she'd read to Abraxas and, sitting propped against the headboard in their bed, read it to himself. He'd have expected her, expected any girl, to head back and wallow in something drippy and emotional. Something about love or generic misery. Not this. " _'I'll wear it like bones, like skin, it'll be the goddamned dress they bury me in_ '," he read again, letting himself feel the words on his tongue.

He knew about masks.

He marked the page and leaned his head back. When Abraxas walked in he cut the man off before he could start his lecture on leaving the girl alone. "I think I've worn out what I can do with the poetry," he said. "She's tough, this one. Maybe I'll just go back to her hair until I can find some other way to hassle her."

Abraxas regarded him with those steady grey eyes that had always seen too much.

"If that's what you want, Tom," was all he said on the subject. "I got you some chocolate when I was out."

"Dark chocolate with bacon?" Tom asked.

Abraxas smiled. "How'd you guess?"

. . . . . . . . . .

 _ **A/N – The poem Hermione reads is "What Do Women Want" by Kim Addonizio. (www poetryfoundatio /poem/171221)**_

 _ **My best guess is that this will be 6 or 7 chapters long. I'm wrapping up the ending now. Endings are hard. *shrug***_


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione grinned at Abraxas as he fussed with a pile of folders. He'd been stuffing them with assorted printouts the night before and now he was double-checking them before putting them into the leather bag he'd pulled out from his closet.

"Where are you off to?" she asked as he ran a hand through his perfect hair.

"Hospital board meeting," he said. "I somehow got conned into organizing a food pantry using leftovers from the cafeteria and you would not believe the red tape that goes into this. We're doing a presentation for three members of some bureaucratic state senate sub-committee that have to sign off on the project. You'd think distributing canned goods no one was going to use would be a fairly easy thing to set up but you'd be wrong."

"You and your bleeding heart," Tom said, looking up from a journal he was reading. Hermione was about to snap at him to shut up when she saw the look in his eye as he examined Abraxas; Tom Riddle looked, of all things, besotted.

Well.

"Raised to power, money, and influence," Abraxas said easily, sliding the last of his folders away and hefting the bag to his shoulder. "Might as well use it for something."

"Food pantries, after-school programs and anti-bullying workshops," Tom said with what sounded like disgust despite the look Hermione still saw on his face. "Your father must be so proud."

"I believe he told me it was good groundwork for when I run for office," Abraxas said. "Populist appeal and all."

"They're still holding on to that dream, are they?" Tom asked, his eyes shuttered now. "I'm sure you'll make a great politician with the 2.5 kids and – "

"Never going to happen," Abraxas said. "See you both later. Tom, try not to make Hermione cry while I'm gone, okay?"

"I'll leave your stray cat alone," Tom muttered. "Jesus."

Hermione glanced from one of them to the other trying to figure out the undercurrents of what had just happened until, after Abraxas left, Tom saw her looking at him and said, his voice smooth and melodic and filled with menace, "What?"

"Nothing," she said and looked back down at her book.

…

Tom had a thing for tea. The water couldn't just be boiling; it had to be the right temperature for the type of tea he was making. He generally preferred some white tea in a fancy tin and it called, apparently, for water that was 79.4 degrees. Celsius. He had a digital thermometer, accurate to the hundredth place, which would beep when the water hit the temperature he wanted. He measured loose tea in to a tea ball with a wooden teaspoon that no one was allowed to use for any other purpose.

Hermione once made a snide remark about tea bags being easier and he'd called her a pathetic, disgusting peasant.

He timed how long the tea steeped – 4 minutes and 27 seconds – with something he had to have stolen from his lab. When Hermione asked about how he came to a time quite as precise as 27 seconds instead of 25 or 30 he sneered at her. "I realize," he said, "that getting things right is somewhat optional in literature but in science we do tend to develop habits around accuracy."

"Asshole," she muttered.

"He did a series of tests," Abraxas said, amused. "He brewed multiple pots and tasted them all."

"Jesus," Hermione said. "OCD much?"

"Precision," Tom said. "It's not a bad thing, Hermione. We aren't all sloppy and poetic like you."

"Why, Tom," she said, fluttering her lashes, "I didn't realize you thought I was poetic. I think I may go up into my room and write long, forlorn passages in my journal about you now. Your dark hair. Your pretty, pretty cheekbones. Your lips. Tom, I may have to include an entire paragraph about your mouth."

Abraxas snickered and Tom actually flushed. "He does have a nice mouth," Abraxas said. "Very nice."

"Why are we out of my tea?" Tom demanded one morning. "There was still some left when I made a pot yesterday."

He glared across the sunny kitchen at Hermione, who picked up her coffee shop takeaway cup filled with what amounted to hot milk with a little coffee flavoring and said, "Don't look at me. I don't like your tasteless hot water."

"You don't recognize quality when it's right in front of you," Tom said. "No breeding."

Hermione forbore to mention the irony of the abandoned orphan being a snob about ancestry. They'd settled into a routine where, as much as they needled one another, some things were off limits; though she hadn't tested it, she was pretty sure that he had been abandoned to the state counted as one of the those things.

"I drank it," Abraxas said. At Tom's incredulous look he said, "What? Jesus, Tom, it's just tea. I'll get you more next time I'm out."

"It's my tea," Tom said. "Now what am I supposed to drink?"

"One of the fifteen other kinds you have?" Hermione suggested.

Tom rolled his eyes. "I'll be at the lab," he said. "At least people there respect my stuff."

After that Tom was petulant for days. He sulked. He sighed dramatically whenever he opened the cabinet with the tea collection in it. He made snide comments about how since it wasn't like Abraxas had a job to go to you'd think he could get the tea.

Abraxas, for his part, dug his heels in and apparently decided that hell would freeze over before he'd pander to this kind of childishness. It was the first time Hermione had seen the pair fight and she didn't like it. She'd grown to rest against the unobtrusive way Abraxas' humor created a buffer between herself and Tom; she realized she'd become oddly dependent on the way the blond aristocrat had begun to wrap her in the same care he wrapped his partner and it irritated her that that partner was being such a jerk about the tea.

When Tom started in again one morning about the stupid tea Hermione reached into her bag and pulled out the tin she'd gotten of the stuff the day before. She'd meant to give it to Tom as some kind of peace offering but she just couldn't take the way the man was harassing Abraxas so instead she threw it at his head.

"There," she said. "Your damn poncy white tea. Now lay off."

Tom had snagged the tin from the air and looked first at it and then at her. "You got me more."

"Obviously," she said. "Glad to see you're as bright as you claim."

"There's only one shop in town that sells this," Tom continued, eyes narrowing as he studied her.

Hermione had already turned away from the man. The way he could provoke her without half trying continued to irritate her but letting him win was, of course, unthinkable. "I figured that out," she said.

"And it's not cheap," he said.

"Yeah, well, I get my rent subsidized because one of my roommates is such an asshole no one will put up with his shit for long," she said, "so don't worry about it."

"Why?" Tom demanded.

She bit the tip of her tongue for a moment and shifted herself back onto one hip so she could tuck a foot under herself on the couch. "So you'd shut the fuck up," she said at last. "I'm tired of hearing you be such a dick to Abraxas; it's just tea."

"Abraxas doesn't need you to watch out for him," Tom said, weighing the tin in his hand as though he couldn't quite decide whether to throw it back at her.

She shrugged and pulled out a book and went back to ignoring him. Several minutes passed and she could hear him go put a kettle on and she assumed he'd gone away to do his elaborate and absurd tea brewing ritual and the confrontation was over until she felt a tapping on her shoulder and looked up to see Tom Riddle, asshole extraordinaire, handing her a cup of his perfectly brewed tea.

"So," he said, "tell me about your research." She gaped at the sudden civility until he added, "And try not to be totally boring about it, assuming it's at all possible to make twelfth century poetry interesting, which I doubt."

She began to smile at that. "There's a bit in this poem," she said, "where they debate the relative merits of infidelity versus fornication. Is that interesting enough for you?"

"And here I thought it would all be tedious declarations of romantic love," he said, settling next to her. "My love is a red, red rose and all that."

"Like a red, red rose," she corrected automatically and he rolled his eyes. "It's a simile, Tom, not a metaphor. And it's not like you care about love anyway. Tedious declarations, I think you said, of what I can only assume you consider to be an equally tedious feeling."

"Don't assume things," Tom said, his voice devoid of any emotion as he regarded her steadily across the rim of his own teacup. "Just because I'm not gushing with sentimental twaddle doesn't mean I don't –"

"Love Abraxas?" she interrupted him.

Tom smiled tightly. He was so obviously uncomfortable she yearned to push him harder but decided that maybe it was a better idea to not be the one to break the ceasefire he'd initiated. "Why don't you tell me about what you're doing in the lab?" she suggested. "Less risk of roses upsetting everyone."

He shrugged. "I doubt you could follow it."

"Try keeping it high level then," she said, making an effort not to grind her teeth. She wished she could tell when he was trying to be a jerk and when his condescending bullshit was just his natural state.

"Well," he said, "how much do you know about cellular immortality?"

Hermione settled back to listen and watched him become slowly more and more animated as he explained what he was trying to do and what he hoped his current research would yield. At one point he stopped and said, "I'm boring you."

She shook her head no. "You aren't," she said very quietly. "You're very compelling when you're interested in something."

….

"If you want to keep that hand you will remove it from my ass."

Hermione's words didn't carry in the little coffee shop but Tom was standing right next to her and he turned, so very slowly, and looked at the man behind them in line who was smirking at Hermione.

"My mistake," the man said as he put his hand back in his pocket. "I stumbled forward; guess I'm just clumsy."

"Love," Tom said, "do you want me to break all of his fingers?"

"I don't think that's necessary," she said. "I can take care of myself."

Tom smiled. "Oh, I'm sure," he said, "but it's been a few years since I experimented with force and pressure."

The man looked from one of them to the other. "Sorry, man," he said to Tom. "I didn't realize she had a boyfriend."

"I'm not her boyfriend," Tom said.

"Which doesn't mean you get to grope me," Hermione said, stepping back and letting the heel of her shoe hover over the man's foot. "I'm a person. Have some respect."

"Fucking feminists," the man muttered.

Tom had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing as Hermione leaned back onto her heel and the man gasped and yelped as she ground her shoe into his foot. "Oh," she said as she picked her foot back up. "I'm sorry. My mistake. I'm just so clumsy in these." She turned to Tom. "What were you saying about force and pressure?"

"Pressure is defined as force over area," he said, taking her arm, "let me help you balance; we wouldn't want you to stumble and hurt the nice man again. Pressure and force means that when you have a very small area, as with those heels, you can end up with a lot of force for just a little pressure." He glanced back at the man. "Hope she didn't break a toe."

…..

"Tom," Hermione asked after they sat down and watched, in pleased accord, as the man she'd 'accidentally' stepped on hobbled out of the shop, coffee in his hand and in obvious pain. "Why were you such a dick about the tea?"

He looked down into his coffee cup. He'd pulled the plastic lid off, muttering about estrogen-mimicking contaminants and he didn't feel like getting breast cancer thank-you-very-much, and now he swirled what was left of his drink around and watched it for a moment before he answered her. "You don't get a lot of your own things when you're in the system," he said at last. "And what you do have, people steal."

"Oh," she said, and reached out to cover his hand with her own before she thought better of it and disguised the gesture by picking up his coffee lid and tossing it toward the trash.

"Don't feel sorry for me," he said in a low voice, not fooled by her aborted plan to offer comfort. "Don't you ever fucking feel sorry for me."

"You do make it hard to give a shit about you," she said, taking a sip from her own cup. "Thanks for offering to break that guy's fingers."

"No problem. You want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for that idiot," Tom said.

Hermione took another sip. "No thanks. I think I'll keep my emotional energy reserved for people who have more than two brain cells to rub together."

. . . . . . . . . .

 _ **A/N – Ah, I'm all charmed and happy people like this silly little AU. It turned out to break best into five chapters so there's three more after this one.**_

 _ **Like all fanfic writers, I thrill to your reviews.**_


	3. Chapter 3

"I give up," Hermione said, tossing the pile of essays she'd been grading down onto the kitchen table. "These people are all idiots."

Tom slid one of them across the wood toward himself and, picking it up, began to read. "Poetry is very poetic. It uses words, some of which are very nice. It means things, many of which have meanings." He dropped the paper back down and smirked at her with amused sympathy in his eyes. "Does it get worse?"

"Oh yes," she said. "This one, at least, isn't plagiarized." She looked at it. "Fuck. I hope it isn't plagiarized. Can you imagine being so stupid you'd steal _that_?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Tom asked her. "I mean, do you _really_ want my opinion of your students?"

"Idiots," she muttered again. "Why would you major in English if you didn't actually like reading? It's not like there are mounds of jobs out there just begging for your expertise in iambic pentameter."

"I hate to break this to you," Tom said, "but I'm not sure the person who wrote that essay could boast of an expertise in iambic anything." He shrugged. "Just give them a failing mark and move on."

"Can't," she said. At his incredulous look she sighed and said, "First day of TA training they told us don't give anything lower than a C unless you are prepared to stand in a Dean's office and justify the grade to the kid's parents."

"Do you even like this field?" he asked with obvious disgust.

She sighed. "I did when I started," she said. "Now… maybe I can find a nice sugar daddy and just write a novel or something and never have to deal with these moronic students or departmental politics again."

Tom looked at her speculatively. "Politics?" was all he said however.

"You've never seen a fight for blood until you've seen a tenure battle in an English department," she muttered. "I swear, these people would send their rivals off to be trampled by centaurs if they thought it would increase their odds of a permanent position."

"And you wouldn't?" he asked.

She pulled the next essay in her stack toward herself. "I'd turn them all into beetles and lock them in specimen jars in your lab just for the fun of it by this point," she muttered. "Fuck tenure."

He laughed at that.

…

Abraxas' parents were the ones who spoiled the equilibrium Hermione and Tom had finally achieved. That Abraxas wore his privilege unconsciously made the way he tossed thousand dollar sweaters under the chair without thinking merely annoying instead of infuriating. His parents, however, had put their privilege on on purpose the day they showed up. The pair walked into the house to fetch their son and his partner for a dinner out and Abraxas' mother said, "Your sweet little grad school house, Abbie, always makes me smile, though how you can live in a place this tiny I don't know."

Hermione looked up at her and tried not to glare. This house had rooms they never even went into. The boys had rented out a spare suite to her just to needle one another. The place was beyond ridiculous and this woman was dismissing it as small and sweet? Later Abraxas, red and stuttering, would haul out a tourist guide to his family home and Hermione would goggle at the scale of mansion where he'd grown up. "You have public days?" she would squeak and he would mutter, "I always tried not to be around those days, but yes."

Now Abraxas' mother smiled at Hermione, her eyes registering that her son's newest roommate was wearing Abraxas' alpaca sweater. Hermione had fished it out from under the couch telling the man it might actually be a sin to let anything that soft stay wadded on the floor and, besides, the grey went perfectly with the school skirts she still wore because they'd been washed so often the wool was practically felted. Hermione had a bad feeling Mrs. Malfoy was reading more into a girl wearing Abraxas' clothes than she should.

Nevertheless, she rose and walked across the room and said, with a poise that would have made her school social worker proud, "It's so nice to meet you. I'm Hermione Granger."

"Yes, charmed," the woman said. She glanced over at Tom and added, her voice managing to convey courtesy and boredom at once, "Tom."

"Ma'am," Tom said.

Hermione watched the way the woman's eyes simply stopped seeing Tom after the necessary greetings. It was as if she had managed to erase his existence and her gaze took in the room but slid around her son's partner. "You've gotten him to stop leaving tea mugs everywhere," Mrs. Malfoy observed.

Hermione smiled as pleasantly as she could. "Abraxas?" she asked. "I think that was Tom's doing, actually. Something about one person who left cups everywhere was bearable but having two of us do it was turning the place into a disaster. He can be very persuasive when he wants to be."

"Excellent," Abraxas' mother said and they stood and sat from there in strained silence until Abraxas appeared.

He looked at Hermione and laughed. "You and nicking my sweaters, I swear," he said before he turned to his mother and brushed a kiss across her cheek, before he took his father's hand and shook it. "What culinary delights are we in for tonight?" he asked as he began walking to the door.

Tom pulled himself up after they'd left and began to follow.

"Tom," Hermione said, even as she cursed herself for being impulsive, "Don't let that that woman's a bitch and a half get to you."

Tom's smile was cold. "It's just one dinner," he said. "I'm used to it."

Hermione snorted and, still cursing herself, flung her arms around him and squeezed. He stiffened at her touch but, before she let go, she said, "I'll be back here thinking good thoughts in your general direction."

He took his hands and unwound her arms from him. "It will be fine," he said. "Honestly, Hermione, you react to things like a child sometimes."

She sat back down and picked up her book but added, "Try not to kill her, okay Tom? It would upset Abraxas."

That made the tense creases around his eyes soften and tricked an actual laugh out of him before he left.

The tense creases were back when they returned.

They were drunk, both of them. So drunk, in fact, that Hermione was sure they'd had a few more after saying goodnight to the Malfoys. "Look," Tom said. "It's the one who's going to save you from your worthless life, Abbie."

"Don't fucking call me that," Abraxas said. "I hate that fucking nickname."

He flung himself down into a chair and leaned his head back against the curved wood and eyed Hermione. "It's not the worst idea ever, though. I mean, if it had to be anyone, our Hermione's the best choice."

Tom made a rude noise.

"Best choice for _what_?" Hermione asked.

"I'll be in bed," Tom said, heading up the stairs. "Sleeping off another delightful night with your parents, Abraxas. Tell her it's okay, would you?"

"What's okay?" Hermione asked, starting to get both irritated and nervous.

Abraxas watched Tom disappear as the stairs turned a corner and then moved to sit next to Hermione on the couch. "You know I really like you, right?" he asked, his diction displaying the excessive precision of a man trying to keep from slurring.

"Yes," she said, drawing the word out.

"Tom does too," Abraxas said.

"That's great," Hermione said, edging away from him a little. "I'll be the best… person… at your wedding."

"You'll be the only person," Abraxas corrected her. "Most people hate Tom and my parents have made it clear they will not be attending if I opt to, and I quote, 'ruin my life with that particular poor choice.'"

"Idiots," Hermione said. "Assholes. Tom's lovely. Well, he's not lovely; he's pretty much a sociopath though it seems I've learned to like that. _You're_ lovely. You're lovely together." She patted him on the knee wondering how, exactly, one was supposed to comfort one's roommate about the sad truth that his parents were bigots.

"Have to have an heir," Abraxas explained, looking into her eyes with the near religious fervor of a man gearing himself up for martyrdom. "Doesn't matter what else I do, have to make the next Malfoy."

"Because we live in the dark ages?" Hermione asked in disgust that rapidly became horror when Abraxas leaned forward and kissed her.

She was so stunned she sat there, her mouth dropping open from shock instead of stopping him. He took that an invitation to add tongue to what had already been a terrible idea and the feeling of Abraxas, who tasted of expensive whiskey, pushing his tongue into her mouth made her react at last. She flung herself back and stared at him. "What the ever-loving fuck do you think you're doing?"

"If I have to reproduce with any woman, I think I could stomach it with you," he said as she wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. "I mean, you're great and I really do think the world of you and you even like Tom which, let's face it, no one does but us, and – "

"Abraxas," she cut him off. "You don't like girls."

"Well, no," he said. "But maybe I've not met the right one."

She could feel her hands curling into claws and forced herself to relax. "Is that what your mother said?"

"Tonight and every time I've seen her since I was seventeen," the blond man said, scotching toward her. "Hermione, it could – "

"No." She put her hand on his chest and pushed him away. "It couldn't. You're drunk. I'm going to go to bed. Alone. And you're going to go to bed and sleep this off. And in the morning we are going to pretend this never, ever happened, okay? We shall never speak of this. Not once. Not ever." She stood up and sighed at how crestfallen he looked. "Abraxas," she said gently, "I do adore you, really, I do. You're smart and funny and a joy to be around. But you're madly in love with that asshole upstairs and you don't like girls. Not that way. Not at all. Did you even like kissing me?"

"It was weird," he muttered.

"Tell me about it," she agreed, resisting the urge to wipe her mouth again. "And it would just get weirder."

"Still friends?" he asked.

"Best friends," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said, making a face. "I thought maybe since I really like you it would be different but – "

"Consider your scientific curiosity, or whatever it was, answered," Hermione said. "And your mother can go to hell."

"She probably will," Abraxas said.

She was halfway up the stairs before he called out, "Hey, Hermione."

"Yeah?" she asked, turning around.

"Tom," he said.

She shook her head in confusion. "What about Tom?"

"It's okay," Abraxas said. "With me, I mean. If you want."

She closed her eyes and tried to figure out what that meant for a moment before deciding that unraveling the mental wanderings of a man drunk enough to think she'd be a good choice to breed an heir was not a wise use of her time. She'd already almost forgotten Abraxas' cryptic comment when she pushed open the door to the room she'd grown to love, tossed her book down on the antique vanity table she never used as anything other than a holder for teacups and books, and turned to her bed.

Tom was in her bed.

He was naked, at least from the waist up. A sheet obscured the waist down part but she had a bad feeling about it.

"What the fuck was in whatever you two drank tonight?" she said as she sent a panic stricken glance around her room to see whether she'd left anything especially embarrassing lying around. Though, in all fairness, she thought to herself, when your roommate is naked in your bed he can't really get on your case for leaving a vibrator or a bunch of bras out.

"I'm assuming it was fermented grains and fruits," Tom said. "Why?"

"Because first Abraxas and now you!" she wailed. "Why did he try to kiss me and why is there a gay man in my bed? What did his mother say to you two? Why has the world gone insane?" She pulled out the seat that was tucked under the vanity table and sank down into it.

"It was the usual," Tom said. "He needs to find a girl. I'm an embarrassing phase. And I'm not gay."

"Abraxas' mother told you that you aren't gay?" Hermione blinked at him.

"No, I'm telling you that I'm not gay." Tom shrugged at her. "I'm bi."

"Maybe you should tell Abraxas that," she said.

"He knows," Tom sounded amused now. "Before we got together I was dating a woman."

"This whole night has gone to hell," Hermione muttered. "What happened to my nice home where I didn't need to worry about men hitting on me?"

"I thought Abraxas was going to tell you we'd decided we wanted you to join us," Tom said. "Bastard. He told me he'd take care of that."

Hermione's eyes widened. "As in… how drunk are you?" she asked.

Tom smiled at her. "Drunk. Very drunk. Too drunk, love, to ravish you so relax. Drunk enough to tell you you'll be our third sooner or later so you might as well just – "

"Abraxas doesn't like girls," Hermione said, stopping him. "Even if you do."

Tom shrugged. "So?" he asked. "He adores you in other ways and it's not like all those Mormons running around in plural marriages are having hot lesbian sex. It's probably more normal for threesomes to not all be into one another that way." He smiled at her. "We just all work together and you're one of the two people alive I can stand so I don't plan on letting you go." She was sitting there, blinking at him, when he added, "And, of course, unlike Abs, I do like girls. And I'm probably more fun than that toy you left out. I put it back in the nightstand drawer, by the way."

Hermione closed her eyes, put her hands over them, and felt her cheeks begin to burn.

The night was getting steadily worse.

"Tom," she muttered, "Could you leave? Please."

He stood up and she peered through her fingers at him, confirming he really was totally naked. Oh god. And gorgeous - so, _so_ gorgeous - with some tattoo of a snake that wound along his hip and up his back and she swallowed and heard herself saying, "Ask me again when you're sober and I know it's not the… not the fermentation talking."

He turned at her door and smiled at her and her heart did a horrid little thing where it turned clichéd somersaults and she could feel herself begin to melt into a pile of sticky goo. "I'm not sure I've ever not gotten something I really wanted," Tom said. "So I'll be happy to remind you that I've decided on you when I'm sober, but you might as well take the night to resign yourself to a life less battery dependent."

"In the immortal words of my mother," Hermione said through the fresh rush of blood to both her cheeks and areas much lower on her body, "Sometimes a man is not enough."

Tom snorted. "Maybe she didn't have two."

"He doesn't like girls," Hermione said, "so he doesn't count in that regard."

Tom looked smug. "I know. I get two of you to suck my cock. Life's pretty sweet."

"Get out," she said, pushing her face more firmly into her hands and trying not to laugh. "You're a menace."

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – "Sometimes a man is not enough" is a direct quote from the second-most horrifying sex talk my mother delivered.**


	4. Chapter 4

Despite what she considered a reasonable fear about what breakfast would hold Hermione eventually opened her bedroom door.

Tom was leaning against the wall opposite.

"Since you're usually a morning person I can only assume you've been avoiding coming out," he said. "I took you as braver than that."

She closed her eyes for a moment before saying, with a sigh, "At least you have clothes on now."

"I'm going to the lab," he said. "I admit I'm not sure how your humanities people work, but they generally frown on nudity in science labs. There used to be the issues with Avery but after the incident even he has stopped stripping down."

Hermione began to walk down the hall. "The 'incident'?" she asked.

"Don't worry," Tom said. "He's mostly fine and he got a tattoo on his arm to cover up the main scar. It's a bit hokey with a skull and a snake but that's what you get for ignoring basic safety protocols."

"Do I even want to know the details of this?" Hermione asked as they wound their way down the stairs to the kitchen and its table and sunlight.

Tom shrugged. "There was screaming."

"I'll take that as a no," she said. "Would you make me some tea?"

"As if I'd let you make it," he said with one of his contemptuous sneers. "Abraxas took some pain meds and went out for bagels."

"And so you stood outside my door and waited for me," Hermione said.

"I wasn't as hung over as Abraxas," Tom said. "I didn't spent hours listening to my mother tell me how important it was to pass along my genetic code."

"No," Hermione said, "You just sat there and listened to her – "

"Do her thing," Tom said. "And then they went home and Abraxas and I had several glasses of a really quite nice scotch and we decided on you."

"To help Abraxas reproduce?" Hermione couldn't keep the cringing out of her voice.

"Well, no," Tom said. "I mean, if he wanted to and you wanted to and you were up for artificial insemination I guess that would work. I could bring stuff home from the lab. But we just decided to keep you."

"I'm not a _pet_ ," she said right as Tom said, "That came out wrong."

He sighed. "Hermione," he said. "Would you go steady with us?"

She buried her face in her hands and tried not to laugh at the absurdity of the request.

"It does sound ridiculous, doesn't it?" he agreed. "But we both want you and I know you adore Abraxas because how could you not and, maybe I flatter myself, but I think you rather like me as well." He paused. "Even though I'm an asshole."

"You really are," she said. "You're awful to almost everyone. You're arrogant and rude and difficult and – "

"Is that a yes?"

"Give me my tea," she said. "And I'll think about it."

Tom sat down in the chair next to her and eyed her. "It's still steeping," he said. "You'll have to wait."

"Do I get to audition you?" Hermione asked.

Tom gave her an inquiring look and she shrugged. "I don't think I should go about buying the cow, as it were, without trying out the milk."

He smiled at that and ran a hand along the side of her face before gripping the back of her neck and pulling her toward him. She squeaked as she nearly tumbled into his lap and he bent down and placed his lips first at the edge of her jaw where he let them linger before brushing them along the side of her mouth and then pressing them against hers. If kissing Abraxas had been a study in awkwardness, Hermione thought, this was the opposite. Tom had brought his other hand up to steady her as he explored her lips with first his own and then with the tongue he grazed lightly across them. She could hear herself make a whimpering noise as he let his nose brush across hers before returning his attention to her mouth. He kissed and nibbled and licked and at some point she was kissing him back, her hands nervously moving to twine in his hair as she parted her lips and actually tasted the man.

He'd already had a cup of his white tea; that she could tell. She spared a moment to wonder how long he'd been waiting outside her door before anything resembling rational thought fled and she was just clinging to him as he gave her that trial she'd demanded.

When the timer dinged that her tea was done he went to go get it and she dragged his mouth back to hers. "Fuck the damn tea," she muttered and he laughed against her.

"I take it I pass the audition," he said, "Or do you want to taste a bit more before I leave you to go record measurements and keep a bunch of worthless graduate students in line?"

"You pass," she said, "Oh my God, yes, you pass."

"I take it she said yes?"

Hermione wrenched herself away from Tom and turned, her face burning, to see Abraxas standing there with a brown paper bag in his hand.

"This is so weird," Hermione said.

"It's just going to get weirder," Abraxas said cheerfully. "Bagel anyone?"

…

"What do you do, anyway?" Hermione asked Abraxas as she pulled a bagel out of the bag the blond man had dropped onto the table and peered into the bag to see if he'd brought and cream cheese back as well.

"I'm rich," Abraxas said, getting a knife from a drawer and grinning at her. "I don't have to do anything."

Tom snorted rudely as he found the spread Hermione had been looking for.

"You can't just sit around and do nothing," Hermione objected.

"Why not?" Abraxas asked as he got down some plates.

"Where's a cutting board?" Tom demanded. "Why didn't you have them slice these at the store?"

Hermione pulled the wooden board off its hook on the wall and, as she set it on the table, said, "Well, you'd be bored. You can't just be idle. You have to _do_ something."

Abraxas shrugged and Hermione looked outraged and like she was starting to sputter until Tom shook his head. "Don't let him rile you so easily. Christ. You're the easiest person to wind up I've ever seen."

"Really? The easiest? How about that girl you just made snake noises at?" Abraxas asked. "She lasted three days before she moved out."

"How was I supposed to know she had a phobia?" Tom asked.

"Maybe because she mentioned it?"

Tom took the bread knife he'd gotten from a drawer and began to slice the bagels. "I don't pay attention to the bleating of sheep."

"You are such an asshole," Hermione said, taking a sliced bagel from him.

"At least I'm a productive member of society," Tom said. "Unlike our fair Abraxas over here who's just 'rich'." He eyed Hermione.

"Don't you even say anything about poetry," she warned.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Tom said.

"You have to do _something_ ," Hermione said to Abraxas. "I know you go out to meetings and things. I mean, you have to do something at them."

"Mostly I just sit around and count money," Abraxas said, a teasing lilt starting to creep into his voice.

Hermione was starting to look more and more outraged so Tom said, with a sigh, "Would you stop? She might actually burst if she gets anymore agitated." He turned to Hermione. "Abraxas sits on the boards of about half a dozen non-profits. I hope you have a fancy dress or two because life with Abs here is an endless series of galas and bad chicken dinners where earnest men and even more earnest women talk at you about their very important and worthwhile causes."

"Slideshows work better than talks," Abraxas said, "unless we can pull up some scruffy teenager who looks nervous and uncomfortable in a suit who can stammer his way through a talk on how the theatre program we're trying to get funding for saved his life. Rescue kids are always good for a donation upsurge."

"That's... awfully cynical," Hermione said, trying not to glance at the third person at breakfast. She wondered how Tom handled the phrase, "rescue kids" given he'd been one. She wondered, at that thought, whether Tom was the impetus for Abraxas' projects.

Abraxas smiled at her. "If you make them cry they'll pull out their checkbook to wipe their eyes, sweetheart." At her aghast stare he sighed. "Look, all these things - theatre programs for at risk kids, food pantries, free medical clinics - they cost money. If you want to get people to donate to some cause they'll never directly benefit from you have to be pragmatic about it."

"Cunning." Tom added. "Sneaky."

"Emotionally manipulative," Hermione said.

"It works," Abraxas said.

"So... what you do is work to raise money for charities?" Hermione asked.

"Chicken Kiev," Tom said in a mournful voice. "Rice pilaf. Endless rice pilaf."

"There are a lot of catered meals," Abraxas admitted. He gave Hermione a wide smile. "You do have a dress appropriate for black tie, right?"

"I have absolutely fallen down the rabbit hole," she muttered. "Which of you plans to come with me to English department functions?"

"Depends," Tom said, "do you want people to find your date charming and personable or - "

"An asshole," Hermione said. "Oh God, you'd tell people your opinion of their research." Tom looked blandly innocent and she shuddered. "Maybe I'll take Abraxas."

Abraxas snickered at that and she gave him a puzzled look but neither he nor Tom elaborated so she just ate her bagel and contemplated the general oddness of this situation.

. . . . . . . . . .

It got weirder, as Abraxas had predicted, when it became clear to Hermione that both Tom and Abraxas assumed she'd move into their room. At once. That night.

"But I like my room," Hermione said after dinner. She had her feet up in Abraxas' lap and was taking full advantage of what turned out to be his remarkable skill at foot massage. Tom had draped himself over a nearby chair and was drinking the expensive scotch he'd bought on the way home from the lab.

"Your bed's too small for all of us," Tom said.

"You know," Hermione said, "we did just start this - whatever this is - over breakfast. Maybe sharing a bed is rushing things."

"Why?" Abraxas asked. "It's not because of last night, is it? I know I was pretty drunk but I swear – "

"Never speak of that again," Hermione muttered. "It's not that."

"Then what?" he asked, thumbs kneading away at the sole of her foot.

"This is _weird_ ," she said in frustration. "I don't know the protocols and – "

"Poetry girl is worried about not knowing protocols?" Tom snorted. "Whatever happened to seizing the day and dancing through the fields and gather ye rosebuds while ye may and all that?"

"Are you quoting Robert Herrick at me?" she said. "Really? And one of the 'put out now because we're all gonna die soon' poems?"

"You have opened my eyes to a glorious world of literature," Tom said. "And I find the message of that one inspiring."

"That you can say that with a totally straight face terrifies me," Hermione muttered, sinking back into the couch. "And I haven't been a virgin for years so it's not even relevant."

"Minor details," Tom said.

"Some time," Abraxas said, "I want to watch you two. It'll be like the nature channel or something."

Hermione buried her face in her hands and tried to keep from laughing. "The nature channel?" she finally asked. "As if you were watching wildebeests go at it or something?"

"Exactly." Abraxas beamed at her. "You can watch us if you want."

"I have this terrible feeling I won't have a choice in that," Hermione said, still trying not to laugh. "Do I get to participate?"

"I'm sure we can figure out a way to make that work," Tom said as he ran his finger along the rim of his glass. "Assuming you want to, of course." He smiled at her at that and looked through his lashes, his lips turned up in his dangerous smile. Hermione felt her breath catch. She'd felt annoyed when she moved in that he had charm he never used on her; now that she was the target of that attention she had an inkling of what the rabbit felt when it saw the shadow of the hawk.

She licked her lips a tad nervously. "I've never done this," she said, fumbling her words. "You're teasing me for not knowing protocols but I like rules. I like knowing how things work. I like a neat series of instructions to follow."

"I can offer you step-by-step instructions," Tom said, still smoldering at her. "I wouldn't have thought that would be quite to your taste but I do aim to please."

"Stop," she said, the word higher pitched than she'd meant it to be. "Don't… I'm… never mind." She slouched back down against the arm of the couch and yanked her feet out of Abraxas' lap and pulling her knees up against her chest.

"Don't," Abraxas said, his voice a warning directed at Tom but the dark haired man had already moved to squat at Hermione's side.

He pulled her hand away from where she had it wrapped around her shins and brought it to his lips. "I'm sorry," he said with what sounded like total sincerity. "I don't do emotions well. Forgive me if I tease more than I should. Let me try this again. I want you in bed with me because I want to taste every inch of you and find out every secret. I want to unravel you and learn you and know you. I want your skin under my hand every night and every morning; you are an enigma I mean to decipher and you're complex enough I assume it will take a lifetime. We don't have rules for this, you know. We do what we want. We do what you want. If you want to wait and stay in your room that's fine. If you want to be in bed with us, that's fine. If you want to go back and forth, that's fine. Set whatever pace you want and we'll meet you at every step."

"Why?" she asked, looking from one of them to the other. "You're both… why add me to your – "

"I think I suffer with what you would call, how did it go, 'in me survives the unregenerate passions of a day –'"

"'When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread, heedless and willful, took their knights to bed'" Hermione finished, blinking at him in wonder. "You're reciting poetry at me. You have poetry _memorized._ "

Tom looked at her with smug amusement. "I have the periodic table memorized, Hermione. Every poem I mocked you with I have memorized. I have a nearly eidetic memory; I can't help it." He began to rub his thumb around her palm in slow, steady circles. "Be heedless and willful and let yourself love us."

"Do it again," she said. At his eyelash flutter she added, "Language, do it again."

Tom looked over at Abraxas and then murmured, "In that desperate country so far from here, I heard you say my name over and over. Your voice threading its way into my ear. I will spend my days working to discover the pattern and its meaning, what you meant, what has been raveled and what has been rent." Then he leaned forward and set his lips against hers, the touch far gentler and less demanding than what had happened that morning in the kitchen. He tugged her other hand away from her legs and pulled both her hands up and set them to wrap around his neck. "Let me learn you," he whispered against her skin. "Let me rend you."

"And what happens when you're done studying me?" she asked, her voice almost forlorn.

Tom pulled back and looked over at Abraxas who shrugged helplessly. "I don't know anything about girls," the blond man hissed, a nervous admission that made Hermione's lips twitch up into a crooked half smile.

"I don't want to be your little science experiment," she said, still very quiet. "Fun for variety and then abandoned when you return to just each other."

Tom pulled himself upon the couch between the other two and pulled Hermione onto his lap. "I don't quit people," he said, "not the ones I care about."

"How many is that?" she asked somewhat wryly.

"Two," he said.

"Not exactly a representative sample size," she said.

He shrugged and kissed the top of her head. "Time will prove my point."

Abraxas reached over and took her hand. "Is it that hard to believe we might want you in our lives for good?"

"I think it's too soon to even know that," she said. "I think we should be cautious."

Tom shook his head. "'Spend all you have for loveliness, buy it and never count the cost.'" 

"It's absolutely unfair to use poetry when you're arguing against me," Hermione objected.

"You didn't really think he played fair, did you?" Abraxas asked. "I mean, really?"

She sighed at that and looked over at Abraxas. Tom had nestled his chin into her and she could feel the warmth of his body as she slowly relaxed and let herself settle against him, let herself drop her head against his shoulder and twine her fingers through Abraxas' and sat there. Abraxas moved closer to them and he and Tom smiled at one another with the familiarity of long standing friendship and love. This, Hermione thought, this was so very strange but felt akin to slipping into a much beloved and cozy sweater or going back to one's own bed after a week on the road at an unpleasant conference.

She could, she thought, get used to this sense of being at home with the pair of them.

"Fine," she said at last into the silence that had grown unexpectedly comfortable, "I'll sleep in your bed. But if either of you kick me I'm moving back to my own room."

"A good compromise," Tom said.

"Get used to this," Abraxas advised. "He tends to get what he wants."

"This isn't just him, is it?" Hermione asked, looking at Abraxas. "I mean, you don't even – "

"It's not just him," Abraxas said, squeezing her fingers. "It's me too."

. . . . . . . . . .

 _ **A/N - This chapter's poetry…**_

 _ **Women Have Loved Before as I Love Now, by Edna St. Vincent Millay**_

 _ **The Raiment We Put On by Kelly Cherry**_

 _ **Barter by Sara Teasdale**_

 _ **One more chapter after this :)**_


	5. Chapter 5

Neither kicked. Hermione woke up to find Abraxas already out of bed and Tom with one hand gripping her hair, an annoyance made more so by the way she had a hard time getting a good angle to get his fingers to release her. He finally made a grouchy noise and turned away and she slid out of bed and tried to remember exactly how they'd talked her into their bed in the first place.

Poetry, as she recalled.

Tom Riddle turning poetry to his ends was almost irresistible.

She padded to the kitchen, tucked into the same old t-shirt and flannel pajama bottom she'd worn to bed because it was one thing to sleep with the pair of them but she was not putting on anything sexy. There was no reason to make this any weirder than it was.

Plus, she didn't own anything that any reasonable person would call sexy.

Abraxas was standing by a kettle that had just begun to boil, already dressed and looking unusually adult and professional. "Tea?" he asked and when she nodded he added, "What kind? I'll brew a pot for us both. Just not Tom's white tea. I can't stand that stuff; tastes like boiled twigs."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "Abraxas," she said slowly, "did you really drink the last of that tea when the great tea drama happened?"

He smirked at her as he casually poured some other loose tea into a pot. "Binned it," he said.

Hermione pulled out a chair and sat down with a sigh. "You're just as much of a manipulative bastard as Tom is, aren't you?" she muttered.

Abraxas just beamed at her and said, face a study in innocence, "It worked, didn't it?"

"Why are you all dressed up today?" Hermione asked, deciding to move on from that little revelation even as she tucked away that, yes, Abraxas really did want her to join their little relationship. It wasn't just about Tom.

"Library board meeting," he said. "We're planning the gala to kick off the fundraising efforts to build a branch down in Snake Hollow."

"Snake Hollow," she looked at him in surprise. "That's a terrible neighborhood."

Abraxas shrugged and began pouring out the barely steeped tea. "Well, it's not the best part of town, no, but the bus service is almost non-existent and most residents don't have internet access in their homes and, Jesus, most kids don't own a single book. We're trying to get a small branch added using private donations because we've already been told that there's no money in the budget for –"

He stopped talking because Hermione had flung her arms around him. "You're squishing me," he said, "I can't pour the tea."

She kissed him on the cheek before she let him go. "Why are you so good?" she demanded.

"Practice," Tom said from the doorway. "Poor you, however, will never get the benefit of just how good he is and you will have to content yourself with me. Did you time that tea when you steeped it?" he added in a demanding tone. At Abraxas' eye roll Tom muttered, "Fuckers. No one does anything right around here."

…

Hermione always wore a necklace with a funny triangle pendant and one day Tom asked, his tone its usual scorn, whether she ever took it off or whether he was doomed to have it poking into him in his sleep forever. He faltered at the way her eyes shuttered and how she turned away from him. "It was my mother's," she said shortly. "It helps me remember her."

"What happened to her?" Abraxas asked, giving Tom a 'why the fuck are you always such an asshole?' look.

"Early onset Alzheimer's," Hermione said.

Abraxas let out a low whistle. That was a three-word tragedy if he'd ever heard one. "I'm sorry," he said.

Hermione shrugged, her shoulders tight, and didn't turn back to look at either of them. "She's in a good place; they take care of her. She spends most of her days looking at pictures of Australia. Damned if I know why; she's never even been there."

"Does she remember you?" Abraxas asked as gently as he could.

"No," she said. "Not at all. It's as if she never had a daughter." She raised her hand and Abraxas could see her wind her fingers around the necklace. "It's even worse, actually, then having her not know me. I agitate her so much they've asked me not to visit."

"I'm sorry," Abraxas said.

"Why?" Tom asked.

"What?" Abraxas turned to the man and gaped at him. No matter how many years he'd known Tom, the man's apparent utter lack of compassion for anyone else still had the power to shock him.

"It's not your fault Hermione's mother lost her mind," Tom said with a snort. "Not hers either. Don't see why you're apologizing; you didn't do anything to the woman."

"It's called not being a git, Tom," Abraxas said. "You should try it some time."

"Your empty sympathy isn't going to help," Tom said back. "C'mon, Hermione. Get your bag and let's go."

"Where?" Abraxas demanded.

Tom gave him a tired look. "To the bookstore, of course, so she can find travel magazines and books about Australia to send to her mum." He crossed his arms as they both stared at him. "What? It's a way she can still express love in a way her mother can accept." He shook his head. "God. You're both so damned soppy all the time but offer you practical ways to have your stupid emotions mean anything about people you actually care about instead of just random indigents and you both get stupid. I'll be outside waiting."

"I am not soppy," Hermione muttered as Tom shut the door behind him. "God, he's such a prick."

"He's an acquired taste," Abraxas agreed. "He's a good guy, though."

"No he's not," Hermione said. "He's an arrogant, vicious bastard who'd probably kill people that annoyed him if he thought he could get away with it."

"That too," Abraxas said. "Get your bag. I'll go with you."

Hermione sighed as she picked up her bad and pulled the strap over her head. "Remind me what you see in him."

"He looks after people he cares about," Abraxas said as he opened their door and held it for her. "He's brilliant. He gives fantastic head."

"Remind me what I see in him."

Abraxas shrugged. "He adores you?"

Hermione sighed as she walked through the door.

. . . . . . . . .

Hermione had had enough of the cheap white wine by the time Tom began to get that dangerous glint in his eyes that she didn't even care. He'd agreed to come to the dreadful little reception meant to welcome visiting professor and had almost promised to behave but there seemed to be a certain point at which 'almost' became a very key word in that sentence.

He'd gamely smiled though inquiries into what he did and the glazed eyes that greeted his revelation he worked in scientific research. He'd asked the visiting scholar charming questions and if there had been a mocking subtext to his sycophant's pose only Hermione had noticed it. He'd picked at the starters and pronounced them an improvement on what he'd have eaten at the lab that night which, given he seemed to subsist on ramen noodles and flat beer at work wasn't the highest praise ever but, again, only Hermione knew that. It wasn't until a junior professor who had, as it happened, gotten the tenure-track position Hermione had been angling for, began to hold court on textual interpretations that Tom's face took on the predatory, amused expression Hermione remembered from when she'd first moved into their house.

She tried, nervously, to remember if Tom knew Irving had gotten the position she'd wanted.

"I really loathe it," the man was saying, "when people are so sure what an Old English poem means, especially when what they think is that the poem has the same meaning as the source material when it's perfectly clear that the poet is, in fact, satirically transposing thematic elements to make a commentary about the originals."

"Yes," Tom said, sipping from his wine glass and them making a face at it, "it really is tiresome when someone is so sure about what a thirteen hundred year old manuscript means, when they think it's, what was the phrase, 'perfectly clear'?" He took another sip and then turned to Hermione, "Love, next time you bring me to one of these could you offer to supply the wine? Just steal some things from Abs' collection. He won't mind."

"I can't do that," Hermione said as she watched her colleague work out what Tom had said.

"I don't think you really have the expertise to know what these texts mean," Irving said, his eyes getting the narrow, pompous squint that made him look rather like a mole rat.

"I admit it would be throwing pearls before swine," Tom said, "but I don't feel it's quite fair to torture me intellectually and gastronomically at the same event."

"Excuse me?" Irving said.

"Oh," Tom said, turning his attention back to the man. "I make no claim to understand what your silly poems mean. Enjoy your games of intellectual masturbation." He took another sip. "Hermione, this is really terrible."

"Tom," she said, trying not to laugh.

Tom looked at the sputtering academic and sighed. "If you're going to condemn someone for their unwonted certainty in interpretation you might consider not putting forth your own, equally dubious, certainties in the same sentence."

"This is important work," the man said, getting ready to explain why his field mattered. Hermione looked back and forth from Irving to Tom and couldn't decide if she dreaded or eagerly anticipated what was about to happen.

"No it's not," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "You're chewing over long digested ideas and trying to impress equally bland colleagues, maybe screw a graduate student or two who's impressed by your use of ten-dollar words or who hopes you'll be able to help her career, all the while grading the papers of near-idiot undergraduates." He took a last sip and then set the glass down with a grimace of disgust. "Have fun if you can, but try not to delude yourself the work matters."

Irving sneered at Hermione. "You might consider not bringing your boyfriend to faculty affairs anymore, _love_. He doesn't quite fit in, does he." He eyed Tom and then added, "What do you plan to do next year, Hermione, after you defend? Any luck on the job search? I know you'd hoped to stay local but we can't always get what we want."

Tom took Hermione's elbow, possibly trying to head her off before she slapped the man in front of her. "We need to get home," he said. "Abraxas wanted your help putting together his proposal to fund some new bunch of godforsaken indigent children to go to summer camp or something."

"Abraxas?" the man nearly squawked. "Abraxas _Malfoy_ , as in the Malfoy Chair of Modern Literary Studies."

Hermione gave Tom a questioning look. "That's the one," he confirmed. "His father has a thing for Samuel Beckett, thus the chair thing. Abraxas is the other member of our triad though he, thank God, is less enamored of post-modernists."

"Your... triad?" the man was now squawking.

"Surely you aren't confined to conventional models for relationships," Tom said with perfect courtesy. "Not a deep thinker such as yourself."

"I didn't know Abraxas' father liked literature," Hermione said.

"Oh yes," Tom reassured her. "Not only are you the girl they've always hoped he'd find, you even like books in a way neither he nor I do."

"You're dating a _Malfoy_?" the man was still struggling with this. "And this...this person?"

"Jesus, Irving," Hermione said. "It's not that difficult a concept.

Tom stage whispered, "I'm not sure Irving's the brightest star in the sky. Does he know you plan to just research and write independently? That you don't need to actually pander to hiring committees?"

"Tom," she hissed before making apologetic noises at her colleague. "We'll be going," she finally said, glaring at Tom who gave her an engaging smile.

. . . . . . . . ..

"And then," Tom said, "I told her she needed to start bringing the wine because they were serving swill."

All three of them were sitting in bed, Hermione wrapped in a less-frumpy silk nightgown Abraxas had shown up with one day, "because, seriously Hermione, you can't wear that ratty outfit to bed. It hurts me." Abraxas had his head in Tom's lap and Hermione was running her fingers through the man's blonde hair marveling at how each strand really was nearly translucent. They'd found more ways to fold themselves together than Hermione would have thought possible and each continued to feel like coming home.

"You didn't use the word 'swill'," Hermione said as Abraxas laughed. "And you name-dropped!" She yanked on his hair at that. "How could you not tell me your family had endowed a bloody chair! I felt like a fool." She added under her breath, "Though at least now I know why you two kept snickering about my department and why I had to take Tom with me. Tom! Not the man one brings to a networking event!"

"Jesus, Hermione," Abraxas said as he snickered, "Relax. And a chair is freaking nothing. My parents put a whole wing on the math building at school when I passed. A whole wing!"

"The Malfoy Thank God Our Son Passed Math Wing," Tom said, "and I don't see how anyone could feel like a fool around Irwin –"

"Irving."

"Whatever. The man was a pompous prick with less wit than the unfortunate souls who had to clean up that party." Tom made a face. "Using the word 'party' loosely."

"He is a jerk," Hermione agreed. "And he's never, ever going to let me forget he got that position."

"Why?" Tom asked.

"More publications?" she said. "He's a man? He flirted with the right person? I have no idea."

"Fucker," Abraxas said. "Want me to ruin him?"

"Abraxas!" she said, mostly aghast but also a little flattered. "You can't do that!"

"Not to be pedantic," Tom said, "but he can. He's done it for me before."

Hermione leaned up against his shoulder. "I would have thought you'd be the one who'd ruin people."

Tom snorted. "I just insult them. Privilege Boy here is the one to go to when you want someone destroyed."

"Good to know," Hermione said, sounding like she didn't think that was good to know at all.

"Not to change the subject from your awful party or my wicked ways," Abraxas said, "but when are we getting married."

Hermione froze.

"Uh…" she said.

"You are so bad at this," Tom said. "You're supposed to ask her first, not just up and demand she pick a date." He sounded so exasperated Hermione laughed. "It's like the tea," he muttered. "If you want something done right you have to do it yourself." He turned and kissed her hair. "Hermione," he said, "will you marry us?"

She pulled away from him and looked first at Tom then at Abraxas. "I don't think I can," she said. "Bigamy is still illegal, right?"

"Oh, that," Abraxas said dismissively. "If you say yes, I'll get that changed."

"Uh…" she said again.

"It might take a while," Abraxas admitted, "but if you agreed we'd get it done."

Hermione leaned up against Tom again and resumed playing with Abraxas' hair. "Oh," she said. It wasn't nice but she enjoyed forcing both of them – manipulative, beloved assholes that they were – to wait rather nervously for her response. "In that case," she said at last, "I suppose, yes."

 **~ finis ~**

 **. . . . . . . . . .**

 _ **A/N – Voila. My little short, because some random anon on tumblr suggested it; I don't usually take plot bunny suggestions because I already have a rabbit infestation problem but I'm glad I picked up this one. Please do review and favorite and I'm Colubrina on tumblr and Colubrina_ on twitter and hope to see you there :)**_


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